Blog #12

S: All ready, lip balm and everything
laughing
A: Okay good (laughing).  So um first I guess, how long have you been writing poetry?
S: 63 years
A: 63 years?
S: 50.. 50 .. 53 yeah 53 years
A: Oh wow so for a while
laughing
A: Do you remember um how you started out writing poetry?
S: Yes, I have I have my first poem
A: Oh wow
S: It's to St Patrick
A: Okay
S:and um I already had off rhymes in it and um I dedicated it to my father for his birthday
A: Oh wow
S: cause um actually I'm just putting it together right this minute St. Patrick's Day is the 17th and my father's was the 21st you know I hadn't actually put that together
A:laughing
S: So thank you (laughing)
A: Okay (laughing)
S: yeah yeah yeah yeah
A: So um how did you like transition just from writing poetry to the performance pieces that you do?
S: um I heard um Phillip Dacey D-A-C-E-Y um read his poetry by heart at the Passaic County Community College poetry center and I was so enamored of that and so um in 2007 I decided that I really need to um have more of my poetry published and um I would like to start readings.  I mean I wrote a lot of poetry and I wasn't really out there
A: mhm
S: um I was too busy teaching and writing (laughing)
A: laughing
S: and so if I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna be reading poetry on a regular basis I want to do it by heart. so the Warren county poetry festival invited me and um I did my whole set by heart.  In fact I got on stage, I took the podium, I walked it off to the um wings and without even having a um a podium I did the the
A: yeah
S: So I was able to I was doing some body working with my body but it was mostly just reciting it the word reciting means that you're doing it by heart
A: right
S: So, um which I had to learn (laughing)
A: (laughing) I'm sure
S:and um and then um I said well I'd like to do some more with this and so I said I'd like to talk to a theater director to help me and so I was wishing and hoping that Ernst Wiggins who's on staff here uh would be the one but I called the theater department and I asked you know and he came forward. So he said okay and so um I have a series of poems on television and fathers.  It seems like fathers is a theme here (laughing)
A: yes (laughing)
S: And uh and then um what he said was okay so we got together in diners looking at it and then he decided to have a meeting to start rehearsing and I was starting to I had I was memorizing
A: Okay
S: I think it was in this room yes in this room and he shows up with three students
A: Oh yeah?
S:and he's talking about lighting you know and sound effects and you know this he's really serious
A: yeah that must have been overwhelming all at once (laughing)
S: Well I have a theater background you know I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts when I was 12 so I mean theater's not unusual for me though I didn't pursue it.  I was also Anne Frank in my senior class play so you know I had a
A: Oh okay
S: I was partly a theater major in college (could not understand what was mumbled after this) So anyhow um so we took up some theater space in vaughn eames and he's really serious So he's saying okay "S" get on the ground okay "S" you've got you're gonna have audience on three sides
A: laughing
S: you know this part of the poem you know and so we started to negotiate how I'm gonna work to build to put the audience in what I'm gonna be doing with my body um what I'm gonna be using with props you know where am I going to be and so it turned into a theater production over these poems and what's fascinating is that um I  I do a lot of walking and I rehearse while I'm walking and driving you know if I have it by heart
A: laughing
S: That's on record
A: laughing
S: and um what happened was I noticed that as I was walking and rehearsing that's very physical that I would get ideas for how to revise the poems on the page that was the fascinating part I am not a performance poet
A: okay
S: A performance poet has to perform the poems for them for the poems to be poems  for me the poems have to work on the page usually first and all of the poems inn television daddy were published in print before we did the show
A: okay
S: So um and I actually have a collection of poems called um television daddy
A: laughing
S: and um so the process of anticipating how I'm gonna embody the poems in voice and in body well um that's kind of redundant
A: laughing
S: um then becomes an inspiration for how to change the poem on the page so if there's a deadline that doesn't do anything for stagecraft I'll go back and I'll change that put more physical imagery in there and it makes it a vastly better poem on the page
A: oh okay very interesting
S: yes
A: Um so I know that you were saying that all your poems are print poems first do you think it makes like a bigger impact on an audience to see it performed as opposed to reading it in print?
S: It makes a different impact
A: okay
S: um when we're reading something on the page um we are at our discretion as to how long you will read it we can go back to it uh we can leave it in the bathroom you know so you know all those things affect a reading where you read it uh how often you read it what time of day you read it you know if you read it with somebody else so uh reading silently gives a whole different experience um if you read something aloud that's uh in it's you know it's the medium
A: right
S: if you know it's a different discourse in a sense
A: right
S: um uh cause it's not oral when you're just reading it on the page and so forth um one of my purposes is to involve the audience there's some call and response um to bring in people to appreciating poetry who wouldn't otherwise because poetry people are made to feel afraid of poetry
A: mhm
S: because I'm afraid there's a lot of bad teaching going on about what poetry is
A: yeah
S: and how to appreciate it and so by embodying these and doing multimedia I'm hopinng to bring people to say oh poetry's about me to go listen to people who read poetry to other poets who read looking down and then ultimately to go to the page itself
A: okay
S: So um cause we live in such a multimedia world with so many different kinds of literacy you know I'm trying to pull on people from different literacies to be willing to look at the page
A: um can you tell me a little bit
S: Did I answer your question?
A: (laughing) yes you did
S: Right cause I'm yeah okay
A: No yes you answered it (laughing) Can you tell me about a specific time that maybe a certain audience member told you that your poetry made an impact on their life?
S: Yes um I had a woman come up to me and um in Television Daddy there's a number of poems of difficult relationship with father and I always catch it in terms of some television thing but that's a way to sometimes if you have something else to look at you can bring out difficult stuff on the side
A: Okay
S: So and she you know uh one of them is about abuse by a father and she said that she was able to get in touch with abuses with her mother and to think about it and to start writing about it
A: mhm
S: So there are any number of experiences like that that I've had that's one specific person I know who spoke of it um and I have three different shows a fourth one now that's going to be opening in May and um they're all very different from each other it also helps to stretch me creatively to think about my audiences that I'm building that they need to have some surprises so um one of my shows is Ashes, Ashes a Poet Response to the Holocaust a very profound and consistent response from the audience which is um I've read about the holocaust I've researched the holocaust but I never got it until I saw your performance because you got me on the emotional body level
A: oh wow
S: and that's what poetry does it makes us experience something not just rhetorically but as a full body emotional experience so um those you know that's important and and I and in my performances I often talk about the power of poetry in the Ashes, Ashes performance I talk about why it's important to you to experience the poetry of the holocaust because it's too easy to get lost in numbers in fact there is a poem about numbers um the new show is actually a musical I'm writing songs
A: Oh wow, interesting!
S: and singing songs um from the points of view of Shakespeare's women
A: Oh wow!
S: and
A: that is neat
S: so um so and again surprise surprise surprise
A: yes (laughing)
S: So did I answer that question? (laughing)
A: Yes you did. so we've talked about kind of the impact that you've made on audience and how they feel towards your poetry but do you have a particular poem that you wrote that is like your favorite or anything?
S: Yes I have a number of them for different reasons
A: Okay
S: For example one is called "Diesel Dyke" and it was actually published in a lesbian gay bisexual tran tranny magazine literary magazine and um what happened was that um my friend who is happens to be gay was walking along one of our paths we hike together a lot and she was she was doing this by herself and there was a woman on a horse who came by her and said "move over diesel dyke" and like where's the car and she was just trying to insult my friend
A: right
S: so nobody insults my friends without my getting a poem out of it!
A: right (laughing)
S: so she and her partner and I went to a truck stop because I was going to write a poem about a diesel dyke
A: laughing
S: and uh actually I put it into a um an expanded villanelle form and I just love that poem because I was able to take on the point of view of of um a diesel dyke I'm not a diesel dyke you know
A: mhm
S: uh and um it's a lot of word play in it and uh a lot of my gay friends love it for the energy the um validation so I really love that and performing that during The Drive Home show it was the finale poem and I wore you know a big uh wig and I put on a you know a leather jacket you know to look like some kind of badass um a harley person so that's a favorite poem um you know but for the story behind it
A: right
S: um I also love doing um Thing which is a poem based on the um The Addam's Family
A: Oh okay
S: because I really get the audience you know snapping (while snapping fingers) and saying "boo doo doo doo" during the whole poem
A: oh that's fun!
S: so it's a lot of fun for that reason um right now I'm in love with all of the songs that I'm writing because I'm writing them now
A: right
S: and but for different reasons I have a song from the point of view of Isabelle who was a nun in Measure for Measure which may be the finale poem for the show uh very soft and lyrical and um nature-filled and um contemplative but I start the show with um Kate from the Taming of the Shrew singing about masochism and sadomasochism
A: oh my goodness (laughing)
S: so you know I would love them for different reasons
A: right absolutely
S: I do have I do tend to love these pieces that are (cannot hear what was said) and I work so hard to bring to audiences
A: yeah absolutely you put a lot of hard work into them
S: yeah yeah

13.07